LeBron James is talking about a new report that says the amount of hate speech on Twitter has increased recently.
Sources said that after Elon Musk completed buying the social media company for 44 billion dollars on Friday, a number of anonymous user accounts took to Twitter with racial slurs like Nazi memes and the N-word to see how far the company’s new moderation rules have gone.
“I don’t know Elon Musk and, tbh, I don’t care who owns Twitter. But I will say that if this is true, I hope he and his people take this very seriously, because it is scary AF. So many inappropriate people are saying that hate speech is free speech,” LeBron James said, citing new research included in a Business Insider article.
The Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) tweeted on Friday, “in the last 12 hours, N-word use has increased by nearly 500% from the previous average.”
I don’t know Elon Musk and I don’t care who owns twitter. But I will say that if this is true, I hope he and his people take this very seriously, because it is scary AF. So many damn misfits say hate speech is free speech. https://t.co/Sy0jvXIBnC
— LeBron James (@KingJames) October 29, 2022
Musk, 51, has raised concerns in the past because he appears to take a relaxed approach to content moderation. That includes what he thinks about Trump’s repeal of the permanent ban.
But just before the Twitter takeover was finalized, Musk sent a public letter to advertisers assuring them that he didn’t want the platform to “turn into a free-for-all hellish environment where anything can be said without consequence!”
In one of his first tweets on Friday morning, he wrote: “The bird is free” to celebrate the purchase of the bird. NBC News says he also responded to a tweet from an account spreading false information about the 2020 presidential election.
Musk told the user, “I’m going to dig more today.” The user was concerned that Twitter was removing followers and making their content unviewable. The Washington Post said some explicit and hateful messages were taken down Friday evening.
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